Diplomacy occupied Afghan commander

KABUL After 19 months in Afghanistan, Gen. John Allen, commander of U.S. and coalition forces, is leaving a war that has become as much about damage control and crisis diplomacy as fighting the Taliban.

Dispatched to begin winding down combat operations, Allen spent much of his final year contending with a series of disasters he calls meteor strikes: a video of Marines urinating on Taliban corpses, the accidental burning of Qurans by U.S. soldiers, civilian deaths in coalition airstrikes and the massacre of 16 civilians by a U.S. soldier.

Then there was a surge in violence against coalition service members by Afghan soldiers and police that jeopardized the effort to train Afghan forces to fight on their own.

But of all the challenges faced by Allen, who on Sunday will hand over to Gen. Joseph F. Dunford Jr., one remains central: keeping President Hamid Karzai's distrust in check, and keeping the U.S. administration committed to prickly ally.

“It can be really tough,” Allen acknowledged in an interview this week.

Referring to his dual role as commander of U.S. troops and leader of the coalition that fights alongside Afghan forces, he said: “I wanted President Karzai to understand that while I had certainly been selected by President Obama to come out here, I very much saw myself serving President Karzai as well. This was the great struggle.”

The sometimes overtly hostile relationship between Karzai and Washington has defined the final years of the Afghan war.

Plans to establish local police as a network of defense militias, for instance, were only grudgingly approved by Karzai. And issues such as U.S.-backed efforts to sever criminal patronage networks among Afghan officials were shut down by the Afghan leader.

After the Quran burning, Karzai and Allen were able to keep it “from being something that could have fractured the relationship,” the general said. On that occasion and others, he said, “it was a personal relationship, I think, that saves the day.”

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